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April 28, 2016 - The Ben Shapiro Show
39:53
Ep. 109 - Trump Finally Comes Out Of The Closet

Trump embraces men in women's bathrooms and higher taxes, Schilling gets fired for political incorrectness, and the vaunted mailbag! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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At this point, it should be perfectly obvious Donald Trump is not a conservative and a lot of his followers don't care.
Many of them love the fact that he lies and that he's vulgar.
That shows that he fights!
He fights all the time!
He just loves to fight!
They don't seem to care that he reflects precisely this many, zero, traditional conservative viewpoints.
But at least he's politically incorrect, right?
That's all that matters.
He's politically incorrect.
That is perhaps the greatest lie of all.
Trump is not politically incorrect.
He isn't.
Donald Trump is not politically incorrect.
The fact is that Donald Trump likes to cite political correctness as kind of his cover.
He's vile and he's stupid, and he uses politically incorrect as a go-to excuse for being vile and stupid.
When it comes to policy, he's often just as politically correct as Bernie Sanders.
So today, Donald Trump called placing Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill an act of pure political correctness.
That's a weird place to make a politically incorrect stand, given that Trump also said, today, in the same interview, that North Carolina's attempt to stop men from peeing next to little girls was, quote, very strong.
They're paying a big price.
There's a lot of problems.
He added, people go.
They use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate.
There has been so little trouble.
But yes, he is a true culture warrior.
Political correctness to Trump extends primarily to treating people badly or signaling to his alt-right base.
So here's Trump on cursing in front of children.
Quote, Oh, you're so politically correct.
You're so beautiful.
Oh, you've never heard a little bad language.
Here's Donald Trump on insulting women generally.
Quote, I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct.
By the way, he thinks Planned Parenthood does wonderful work.
Here's Trump on his campaign manager grabbing and bruising a woman and then gaslighting her.
I don't want to be politically correct.
Here's Trump on having police throw protesters out of his rallies.
In the good old days, they'd rip him out of that seat so fast, but today, everybody is politically correct.
Here's Trump on insulting a former POW hero, John McCain, saying he's a loser for being captured.
Quote, I'll say what I want.
Maybe that's why I'm leading in the polls, because people are tired of hearing politicians and pollsters telling the politicians exactly what to say.
Here's Trump on mocking a disabled reporter.
I don't take that back because the person was groveling in terms of creating statements.
Never say a disabled person or the disabled.
Say a person with disabilities.
In other words, you say the other, you're in trouble.
It's so complicated out there.
It's tough.
We want to be politically correct, but a lot of us don't have time to be politically correct.
Every so often, Donald Trump uses political incorrectness correctly as a description of factual claims that aren't tolerated by the left.
He's done this, for example, with regard to illegal immigration sometimes, and Muslim terrorism sometimes.
But more often, Trump uses political incorrectness as a sort of applause line.
It's cover for saying stupid, ridiculous things.
Trump is not a politically incorrect warrior.
He is a leftist.
He has always been a leftist.
But then, he takes that leftism and he slathers it in the gooey, incoherent gravy of political incorrectness and his supporters' cheer.
And that, of course, is the great irony.
The same people willing to ignore Trump's leftism because he's politically incorrect, the same people enraged at the lies of political correctness, are willing to swallow Trump's biggest lie, that he's a politically incorrect warrior, even as he champions increased taxes, abortion clinics, and transgenders peeing next to little small girls.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show. - You tend to demonize people 'cause they don't care about your feelings. - So now we're seeing more presidential Donald Trumps.
So we had Donald Trump in the primaries and he was wild, crazy man, Donald Trump.
And now, he's Donald Trump.
Presidential Donald Trump.
He said that we would be getting this shift anytime now.
He'd be the most presidential person you'd ever seen.
So presidential that you'd be bored with him.
Because he thinks that being a decent person is boring.
Which is why he spent his entire life being an indecent person.
According to Trump, apparently being presidential means pivoting.
And pivoting is something that supposedly everybody does.
We get to the general election, and now you have to appeal to the moderates, and so you pivot.
And the entire media has been waiting for Trump to pivot.
Well, his pivot looks a lot like pandering to the far left, so...
Here's the point that I'm gonna make today about Donald Trump and his pivot.
He's said a bunch of things today.
Many things today in one interview on the Today Show, where it's clear he's now quote-unquote pivoting to the general election.
Now his supporters will say, well, you know, that's just what he has to say to get elected, right?
I mean, come on.
He's really this hardcore right-winger, and he's really, this guy's gonna stand up for nationalist, politically incorrect interests, and then he's, and he's got to say what he's got to say to get elected.
What I'm gonna make the case for today is that Donald Trump's politically correct left positions on major issues of the day is actually what he believes, and he has been lying to you throughout the primaries.
Because there is predicate for everything that he is currently saying in things that he has said in the past.
Everything that he said today, all the crazy stupid things he said today, he has been saying for literally decades, but he thinks his supporters are morons and so he thinks he can get away with this.
I don't know if Trump supporters know that he's playing them for morons.
I don't know if many of them are too stupid to get that he's playing them as suckers.
But he is.
He's playing you as a sucker.
So, let's take for example today, Donald Trump's commentary on transgenders.
Here is Donald Trump explaining that he's asked about the North Carolina law that says that men are not allowed to go into bathrooms with little girls.
More importantly, the government is not allowed to force private institutions So if Caitlyn Jenner were to walk into Trump Tower and want to use the bathroom, you would be fine with her using any bathroom she chooses?
That is correct.
Trump talking about transgenders using bathrooms of their choice.
So if Caitlyn Jenner were to walk into Trump Tower and want to use the bathroom, you would be fine with her using any bathroom she chooses.
That is correct.
Okay.
Different issue, also a social issue.
You know, there's a big move to create new bathrooms.
Problem with that is for transgender.
That would be a, first of all, I think that would be discriminatory in a certain way.
It would be unbelievably expensive for businesses and for the country.
Leave it the way it is.
Okay, leave it the way it is.
It would be too expensive to have a single transgender bathroom.
But!
But!
He would say the North Carolina law, and he went on to say this.
He said the North Carolina law itself is really not a good law.
It's generated too much economic loss.
So basically, it's being boycotted, and therefore, it was a bad law to begin.
So people are saying, well, this is just Trump pivoting.
It's just him pivoting to have a broader draw.
There are a couple things.
Number one, you can learn from what he's saying.
Number one, he's saying basically what John Kasich has said about religious people.
Right?
If a religious couple is faced with a gay couple that wants to come in and have their gay wedding catered, the religious people should just sit down and shut up.
Right?
That's basically what he's saying there.
He's saying, if you run a restaurant and it only has a male bathroom and a female bathroom, let's say you run a Chuck E. Cheese and it only has a male and a female, if...
If, you know, Bruno from the neighborhood bar walks in in a dress, he should be able to walk right on into the ladies room and you should- there are never any problems that arise from this.
Except, of course, for the massive brawl that just broke out in L.A.
high school where they just put him in a transgender bathroom.
But the other thing is that, you know, when it comes to Trump appealing to the other side, He doesn't... Because he is of the other side, he says things they like and things that we don't.
Because this is who Trump has always been.
There's no change in Trump.
Now you're seeing the genuine Trump.
You thought during the primaries that was Trump unleashed.
No.
Now you're about to see what Trump actually thinks.
What Trump actually thinks is all the same things that Hillary Clinton thinks.
So in 2000, here's what Trump had to say about same-sex marriage, right?
Sort of on the same score.
He's always felt this way, folks.
He's just been lying to you.
Here's Donald Trump back in 1999, 2000.
Do you think gays should be allowed to be married?
It's something I haven't given lots of thought to.
I live in New York City.
There's a tremendous movement on to have and allow gay marriage.
It's just something that is too premature for me to comment on.
How about gays serving in the military?
It would not disturb me.
I mean, hey, I lived in New York City and Manhattan all my life, okay?
So, you know, my views are a little bit different than if I lived in Iowa, perhaps.
But it's not something that would disturb me.
You know, this clip, by the way, demonstrates once and for all that Donald Trump's lies about New York values are just that, they're lies, right?
He understands exactly what New York values are, they're left values.
Okay, so, on the transgender thing, he's always felt the way the social left does.
He's a social leftist.
On abortion, Would you want to change the Republican platform to include the exceptions that you have?
Yes, I would.
Yes, I would.
Absolutely.
For the three exceptions.
Would you have an exception for the health of the mother?
I would leave it for the life of the mother, but I would absolutely have the three exceptions.
So he wants to change the Republican platform, right?
Okay, so let's be clear about something.
Mitt Romney had the same position on abortion that Trump purports to have now.
Except that Mitt Romney never praised the largest abortion provider in the country as a worthwhile organization.
You know, the chain that kills hundreds of thousands of babies a year?
Romney never praised that organization.
And he could talk about why he had converted to becoming pro-life.
Trump has never been able to talk about that because he isn't pro-life.
Romney, even though he disagreed on rape and incest with the Republican Party platform, never called for the platform to change.
The reason that he never called for the platform to change is because the platform says the unborn have rights.
That's what the Republican Party platform says.
It says the unborn have rights.
They have constitutional rights.
That applies across the board.
Here's the truth about the rape incest position.
It is a position of political convenience.
You'll see politicians take this position because they're trying to be politically correct.
It is a politically correct position to say that a woman has suffered, therefore she gets to abort the baby that is the product of rape or incest.
It's a politically correct position because the logic doesn't change.
Okay, the logic behind no abortion is this is an independent human life.
This is the entire logic behind no abortion.
The logic behind the anti-abortion pro-life movement is this is a human life.
An independent human life.
Once you say this is an independent human life, it doesn't matter the terrible, horrible things that happen to you.
It matters that this is an independent human life you don't get to punish because something bad happened to you.
When I've been asked about rape and incest, what I say is rapists should be castrated or executed.
Also, you don't get to kill babies.
Right?
If something horrible happened to you, the person who did the horrible thing to you should be punished.
But the independent human being that was created as a result of the act does not bear responsibility for that.
The baby doesn't bear responsibility for that.
So taking the baby and killing the baby is a punishment that the baby has not earned.
Right, this is why the Republican platform says what the Republican platform says.
Trump says he wants to change the platform because he's pandering to the left.
And again, the reason he's pandering to the left is because Trump is of the left.
So, flashback again.
Here's Donald Trump on abortion from that same interview, just 16 years ago.
Donald Trump on abortion.
Partial birth abortion.
The eliminating of abortion in the third trimester.
Big issue in Washington.
Would President Trump ban partial birth abortion?
Well, look, I'm...
Very pro-choice.
And, again, it may be a little bit of a New York background because there is some different attitude in different parts of the country and, you know, I was raised in New York and grew up and work and everything else in New York City.
But you would not ban it?
No.
Or ban partial birth control?
No.
I would, I would, I am, I am pro-choice in every respect and as far as it goes, but I just hate it.
I just hate it, but I wouldn't ban it.
Okay, so, again, this is genuine Trump.
From 1999, when he wasn't running for office, this is genuine Trump.
What you've seen in the primaries is not genuine Trump, and that's why he ends up in these awkward positions, where he's trying to now walk back all of these harsh positions he took in the primaries, because he doesn't actually believe those things.
Now, people have said he had this Rhodes-Damascus conversion.
Most people in their life can tell you when they had the conversion.
Trump says he has been consistent throughout his political career.
Trump says that he had some sort of conversion on abortion, won't tell you when, won't really tell you why, won't tell you how, won't tell you what changed in his belief system to bring him here.
But now he wants to change the abortion platform.
So he's doing the work that Hillary Clinton won't do, right?
He's actually changing, he wants to change the Republican platform on abortion, and he's taking Hillary Clinton's position on the North Carolina gender law.
But that's not all during this interview, right?
True Trump is now coming out.
So here's True Trump on tax policy.
For the most part, I have to say though, Wall Street people, they're aggressive, they're tough, they're smart, and they bring a lot of money and a lot of jobs into this country.
Do you believe in raising taxes on the wealthy?
I do.
I do.
Including myself.
I do.
Yes, I do.
I do.
I believe in raising it.
But has he read his own tax plan?
His own tax plan calls for the top marginal tax rate to be lowered by more than 10%.
So what is he talking about?
He's doing what he thinks he's supposed to.
He's pivoting.
But his pivot is actually back to what he believes.
Here is Donald Trump in 1991 talking about Ronald Reagan's tax cuts while testifying before Congress.
So this tax act was just an absolute catastrophe for the country, for the real estate industry, and I really hope that something can be done, as Congressman Thomas recently said, that something can be done to change at least parts of it, because it has taken all incentive away from investing in real estate.
And real estate really means so many jobs.
I mean, you have a city called New York City.
You have a city, Boston.
You have other cities and so many other cities.
But I can tell you from very personal knowledge, New York City has virtually no construction right now.
And we're not only talking about office buildings, of which there are many.
We're talking about housing.
Moderate-income housing, low-income housing, even high-income housing, where you create jobs, you create so many other things.
They buy carpet, they buy furniture, they buy refrigerators, they buy other things that fuel the economy.
And incentive has to be put back into the construction of things that are needed, such as housing of all kinds.
I heard this morning that we've had the lowest number of houses built, in terms of the housing, since 1946.
To be clear, this is him ripping on Ronald Reagan's tax cuts, saying that Ronald Reagan's tax cuts undercut the real estate market.
This is Donald Trump suggesting that tax cuts for wealthy people are bad and that taxes ought to be higher for wealthy people, and then there should be magical subsidies, loopholes for the rich, that should then be given to build things.
The real reason there weren't any housing starts in New York City during the time he's talking about is because there was heavy rent control in New York City during the time he's talking about.
There was no incentive to build.
Donald Trump had plenty of money.
He could build whatever he wanted, right?
I mean, he's super duper wealthy.
He's on the cover of Playboy.
But this is what he actually believes.
So here is the question for you Trumpsters.
Here's the question for you Trumpsters.
Do you believe him then?
And do you believe him now?
Or do you believe what he was telling you five minutes ago when he held those positions for like five months?
Do you believe the positions he held for 30 years?
And the positions he's going back to now?
Or do you believe the positions he held for that tiny five-month period where he wanted your vote?
Right?
Think about this in your regular- in your daily life.
In your daily life, okay, you're dating somebody.
And you know that for the past 20 years, this person has been a horrible drug addict and cheater.
You know that this is true.
And then, for four months when you're dating this person, the person turns into an angel.
Turns into an angel.
And then you get engaged.
And for the next two weeks, the person goes on a complete bender.
They go out and they cheat on you, and they go out and they take drugs, and they go out and they do all the terrible things they were doing before they met you.
Do you think now, when you marry this person, you're gonna get the four-month person who's trying to get something from you?
Or do you think you're gonna get the 30-year person and the thing the person's doing now?
Trump pivoting is pivoting back to what he believes.
Trump is now doing what he likes to do.
He's making overtures to the left, and this is what he will do as president.
But here's the good news.
Donald Trump really draws the line at one place and one place only.
So he gives up on abortion, right?
He's already trying to push the Republican Party left on abortion.
He's giving up on taxes.
And he's giving up on basic, not only religious liberty, but basic facts that men cannot magically become women.
He's giving up on all those things, but there is one place where he really draws the line.
One thing he will not allow the federal government to do.
One place where he is going to stand four square with the people who are not on the left.
And that's Harriet Tubman on the 20.
Okay, here he is.
Harriet Tubman on 20.
Harriet Tubman will now replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.
You have so often during this campaign railed against political correctness.
Do you see this as a move that is all about political correctness or is this a move that is simply way overdue?
Well, Andrew Jackson had a great history, and I think it's very rough when you take somebody off the bill.
Andrew Jackson had a history of tremendous success for the country, and as you know, they were gonna do, you know, the $10 bill, and then all of a sudden, the Broadway play, Hamilton, or the Broadway play sort of saved that one.
And I read it just this morning.
It was going to be Hamilton.
Are you in favor of Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill?
I think Harriet Tubman is fantastic.
I would love to leave Andrew Jackson and see if we can maybe come up with another denomination.
Maybe we do the $2 bill or we do another bill.
I don't like seeing it.
Yes, I think it's pure political correctness.
They just bait him right into it, right?
They just bait him right into it because this is how easy he is to manipulate.
So there they are saying, you've talked about political correctness.
Isn't it politically correct to put Tubman on the bill?
And you know they're looking for the answer, of course it's politically correct to put Tubman on the bill.
Now, here's the argument about Harriet Tubman on the bill.
Harriet Tubman definitely deserves monuments built to her.
Harriet Tubman was a total badass.
I mean, Harriet Tubman was the kind of gal, she was a, as National Review puts it, a gun-toting, Jesus-loving spy who blazed the way for women to play a significant role in military and political affairs.
She was born into slavery as Arminta Ross, And she knew the slave system's inhumanity firsthand.
She later went back south, always carrying a gun she wasn't afraid to use to help guide her own family and many others out of the plantations.
Apparently, she carried the guns not only in order to scare away slave catchers, but to tell the people who were with her.
If you try to go back to that plantation, I will shoot you personally.
Harriet Tubman did not take prisoners.
Harriet Tubman was tough, tough, tough.
I mean, she worked also with John Brown in terms of his revolt against the slaveholders.
She was a badass.
During one of her scouting missions along the Combahee River, She became the first woman and one of the first African Americans to command a significant number of U.S.
troops in combat.
She organized a raid to free more enslaved people than in her decades of work on the Underground Railroad in that military operation.
She advocated for allowing blacks into the Union Army.
And she never really stopped working.
She was...
A real, a real figure.
Okay, so, she deserves monuments built to her.
Should they remove Jackson from the 20?
That's another question.
Jackson was not a particularly good guy.
Jackson was responsible for the Trail of Tears.
He treated Native Americans very poorly.
He also was, unlike a lot of the slaveholders who wrote the Declaration of Independence, he was in favor of expanding slavery into the territories.
And really opposed any attempt to curtail slavery's growth.
So there are a lot of problems with Andrew Jackson.
He was the creator of the Democratic Party, which in and of itself has been a disaster.
But Andrew Jackson off the 20 is a different question than Tubman on it.
Here's the problem I have with Trump.
Okay, so what Trump says right there, that it's pure political correctness to put Harriet Tubman on the 20.
There's an element of political correctness to putting Harriet Tubman on the 20th.
The element of political correctness is not about Tubman.
It's about the motivations of the people who decided to do this.
Because what they said is, we want a woman on the bills, who's the woman we can pick?
That is political correctness.
It wouldn't have mattered which woman they picked, whether she's deserving or not deserving, as soon as you say, we're not going to pick the best person for the bill, we need somebody who fulfills Such and such identity politics group, you've now moved into the area of political correctness.
But here's where Trump is so wrong and so stupid.
Trump's suggestion that Harriet Tubman doesn't deserve to be on a bill more than Jackson is actually silly.
Tubman does deserve to be on a bill more than Jackson does.
She does.
That doesn't mean she's the best person for the bill.
As I've said, I think Ronald Reagan probably deserves to be on a bill certainly as much as Harriet Tubman, but There's a case to be made for Tubman.
The fact that Trump, in the same interview where he's saying men should be able to pee next to little girls, draws the politically correct line at Harriet Tubman, demonstrates that the man has a gut non-understanding of political correctness.
He thinks political correctness just means anything with which he disagrees.
Political correctness means being politically incorrect across the board.
If you're going to be politically incorrect, and you want to say this about Tubman, fine.
Go ahead.
I think it's a dumb argument.
I think it's a waste of time.
Fine.
Make the argument.
More power to you.
But!
You can't then sit there and say men are women when they go pee-pee next to little girls.
You can't play that game.
It's just a silly game.
So, you know, usual routine from Donald Trump.
Trump did say one thing that was true yesterday.
He said that he would not be here for the media.
Thank you, media.
And this is exactly right.
Here's Donald Trump talking about the media.
Those people, look at all those cameras zooming.
They are the most dishonest people in the world.
The media.
They are the worst!
They are the worst!
They are very dishonest people.
They are terrible.
They are, honestly, and I don't mean all, but I mean like 75-80%.
And they know it.
They know it.
They know.
These are not stupid people, but they're very dishonest people, in many cases.
Do we like the media?
Do we hate the media?
Okay.
Now, I don't hate anybody.
I love the media.
They're wonderful.
But, hey, I guess we wouldn't be here maybe if it wasn't for the media, so maybe we shouldn't be complaining, right?
Okay, so he says the media's terrible, they're terrible, they're terrible, and then he finally, at the very end, gets to the true point.
And the true point is, the media has made him what he is.
Both the media who don't like him, because he's been able to run against them, by suggesting that they're just liars and horrible, and as I've said a couple of broadcasts ago, the more he lies, the better it is for him.
Because if he lies, then the media take the brunt of it.
If he lies and gets away with it, then it's a slap against the media, and that's how his supporters take it.
But at the very end, he gets to the real point, and that is, if it were not for the media, nobody would have ever heard of Donald Trump.
Donald Trump was a media creation.
He continues to be a media creation.
Now, he's become almost exclusively a creation of Fox News.
So, we're gonna go through some of the people who have been on Fox News just in the last 24 hours.
And you're about to see what it looks like when an entire network begins to get behind a guy.
Here is Greta Van Susteren interviewing Reince Priebus.
She's asking Reince Priebus about the delegate process.
Listen to the question.
His answer doesn't matter.
Listen to Greta Van Susteren's question to Reince Priebus.
Well, I think that people are going to see that we're a pretty unified party.
We all want to put on a great convention.
We don't want to put our hand on the scale.
We want everyone to understand that we want a fair and open nomination process.
We want to take the rules kind of out of the equation and make this about the vote on the floor.
Do you have the votes or don't you have the votes?
That's really the only question that we want on the table.
And everything that we can do to make it more about that and less about some Goofy idea, or trick, or inserting, you know, rule provision.
It's better for us, and that's what we want to do.
And what she said right before that, Greta's question right before that, is she, there's a direct quote.
She actually said, how are you going to, she says, my email is filling up with people, and it's filling up with people, and she says, how are you going to convince them that the system isn't rigged against them?
There's no way to answer that question.
The question is leading.
How are you going to convince them the system isn't rigged?
I can't convince them.
If they want to believe the system is rigged, they're going to believe the system is rigged.
But this is how they operate, right?
So Greta leads off that question.
That specific question was, how can you convince people that the system isn't rigged?
Here's Sean Hannity, who's been doing yeoman's work for Trump.
As we played yesterday, he went after Senator Ted Cruz with a ball-peen hammer.
And today, last night he went after him just as hard, but only by helping Trump.
He says, I'm gonna go out and I'm actually going to basically recruit for Trump in Pennsylvania.
Okay, let's put aside Hannity for a second.
Then there's Pat Buchanan.
So number one, I don't know how Pat Buchanan is back on TV.
Pat Buchanan was widely recognized as a horrible racist and a terrible xenophobe back in the 90s.
the fellow who not only talked about Zulus when he was talking about folks coming from Africa, but also talked about how basically, but a fellow who has, who convinced President Ronald Reagan to go and give a eulogy at an SS cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, while Reagan was president.
Buchanan has long been a dicey figure.
He's back, and now he says Trump won.
Everybody knows it.
This is just the way it is.
The American people are looking at this and they say, you know, whether we like Donald Trump or not, The guy went out and he has won this thing.
Now, if by poaching and pilfering delegates here and there, Cruz and Kasich can hold Trump off from the nomination on the first ballot, and then they take it, it'll be like, you know, the heavyweight champ standing there with his gloves over his head and the award going to the guy lying on the canvas.
What do you say to the argument Well, everyone knew the rules going in ahead of time and Donald Trump should have competed better in Colorado, etc.
What's your answer?
My answer is there's no doubt about it.
Ted Cruz knows the rules better than Donald Trump.
Ted Cruz has a better ground game than Donald Trump.
And Ted Cruz is not doing anything criminal and pilfering delegates and telling them to hold out and all the rest of it.
But what I'm saying is the American people have perceived a tremendously exciting, interesting contest And the reality is that Donald Trump won it, and everybody knows it.
Look at that TV last night, Sean.
Are people going to turn around and say, now they're going to give it to the guy who was runner-up by 300 delegates?
Why?
And Hannity sits there and, of course, nods along.
So you've got Buchanan, you've got Hannity, you've got Greta Van Susteren, and here's Laura Ingraham, who subs for Bill O'Reilly, saying, again, this is from the coverage of the night, right?
This is the coverage of the night where Trump wins the New York primary.
Here's Laura Ingraham saying, the only question is how far people will go to stop Trump.
I mean, what you're watching right here is a concerted propaganda effort.
Now, all of these people can have their various reasons for supporting Trump.
That's fine.
You can support Donald Trump.
All I'm pointing out is that Donald Trump complaining about the media isn't even a critique of the people who are in the media right now.
This is a critique of Trump.
Trump saying the people in the media are against him is like saying it's like O.J.
Simpson saying that the jury was against him.
No, it turns out not.
Here's Laura Ingraham on Fox News.
The only question is, how far will the Republican establishment go to kill off this guy who is the most popular of all the other candidates?
Now, this is analysis.
This is not an endorsement of Trump.
This is an analysis.
How far will Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan and all the other people who say, oh, they're not putting their finger on the scale, but come on.
I mean, we heard Mitch McConnell today.
We heard Paul Ryan talk about the negative tone.
Meanwhile, Sean, we're hearing about Trump staffers being blacklisted if they ever try to work again.
Now, who has the bad tone now?
Is it Trump?
Or is it the GOP establishment that seems like it's pulling out every stop to try to stop him from getting this nomination?
I think that's the real question.
And then there's, of course, Sean Hannity, who anchored this whole crap show on Fox the other night.
He raised a great point.
It's a great point.
Everything's a great point as long as it's pro-Trump.
Then Bill O'Reilly jumped on the bandwagon, too.
Here's Bill O'Reilly talking about how history will view Donald Trump as a popular movement.
Donald Trump is, of course, the big winner.
On the other side, it's hard to see how the Republican Party can deny Trump the nomination.
Unless he really gets hammered in Indiana and California.
You expect him to do pretty well in Pennsylvania, Maryland, those states on the Northeast.
But right now I would say it's 80% going to be Clinton versus Trump.
And that's a pretty high number, 80%.
Yeah, that's what it looks like for sure.
Okay, and he would go on to talk about how this is a popular movement for Trump.
So the idea the media is against Trump is just nonsense.
I mean, Fox News is certainly very much in favor of Donald Trump.
The vast majority of their main hosts have been very much in favor of Donald Trump.
Megyn Kelly may be the only holdout.
I think Bret Baier is a holdout.
But aside from that, virtually all their other hosts are pro-Trump.
And again, not a critique of the hosts.
They can be as pro-Trump as they want to be, so long as they're honest about it.
It's a critique of Trump who claims that he's been victimized by this whole system.
And of course, this is driving people to surrender.
It's driving the mainstream Republicans to surrender.
Steve Schmidt, who is a campaign advisor for Mitt Romney and a campaign advisor for John McCain, he says Trump is going to win the nomination on the first ballot.
I think that when you look now at the math of this race, and you look at the states ahead, you look at the winner-take-all states, Donald Trump is going to be the first ballot nominee of the Republican Party.
He will clear the 1237 mark by at least 50 to 60 delegates.
By the time the votes are counted on June 7th in the state of California.
And all of this puts Ted Cruz behind the eight ball.
The senator from Texas puts him behind the eight ball because you got Ted Cruz there and you can't help.
Once the momentum and the media momentum is behind a candidate, it's very difficult not to look like you're nipping at that candidate's heels.
And Ted Cruz, that's all he can do at this point is just say, Trump won't debate me.
True.
Trump is kind of fringy.
True.
All of that is realistic, and all of that is correct.
But that doesn't change the fact that Trump does have more delegates than he does, and so it looks like Cruz is nipping at his heels.
And that's what it sounds like when he says, for example, that Trump has always been a fringe and marginal candidate.
When he says that, people say, okay, yeah, but he has way more votes than you do.
So it puts Cruz behind the eight ball.
So my opinion at this point is that As you know, I'm a pessimist by nature.
I believe that Trump will make it on the first ballot.
I think that the establishment will give it to Trump on the first ballot.
And I think that they're about to get what they're asking for.
All the Trump supporters are about to get what they're asking for.
The establishment is about to get their establishment candidate who pretends that he's a populist.
The populists are about to get the guy who they think wasn't lying to them but actually is.
And the sad thing about all of this, of course, is that Hillary Clinton remains eminently beatable.
Just today, Hillary said that we just have too many guns in America, right?
Here's Hillary Clinton.
And when it comes to guns, we have just too many guns on the streets, in our homes, in our neighborhoods.
And, you know, there's been a lot of talk in this campaign, in the primary campaign, about the power of certain interests in our country.
And we do have a bunch of powerful interests, make no mistake about it.
Okay, so, I mean, look, this is ridiculous stuff.
There are 300 million guns in the United States.
There are 100 million gun owners.
Virtually none of them, really, I mean, percentage-wise.
Virtually none of them are involved in shooting incidents.
I have two guns, personally.
If this isn't the prelude to a gun seizure and gun confiscation, I don't know what else it would look like.
But she's going to win, and she's going to win because The Trump people insist on nominating the most unpopular candidate in the history of the United States.
Matt Walsh makes this point over at The Blaze today.
He's exactly right.
The Trump people, we've told them for months, if you do this, we will not vote for this guy.
The American people have told them for months, if you do this, we will not vote for this guy.
If we then don't vote for this guy, that's your fault.
You picked him.
Okay?
If you take a ball-peen hammer and smash it into your forehead, And then you say, and I say to you beforehand, if you take that hammer and smash it into your forehead, it's going to hurt.
Bad things are going to happen.
And then it turns out it actually hurts?
You don't get to blame me for it hurting.
That's your fault.
You made this choice.
We warned you.
We warned you.
Okay.
Now, for a couple, we'll just skip straight to things that I like, and then the mailbag.
So, things that I like will conclude the musical week here on The Ben Shapiro Show.
This is, I mentioned that I think the best, the most brilliant musical number ever written is that quartet from Sweeney Todd.
The kind of all-time musical number, the most memorable musical number, is this soliloquy from Carousel, and people who know Broadway know this.
This is John Wright, who was the original in Carousel by Rodgers and Hammerstein.
We'll play a little bit of it, but it's just, it's an amazing piece of work.
I wonder what he'll think of me.
I guess he'll call me the old man.
I guess he'll think I can lick every other fella's father.
Well, I can!
I bet that he'll turn out to be the spittin' image of his dad.
But he'll have more common sense than his puddin'-headed father ever had!
I'll teach him to lasso and dive through a wave when we go in the mornings for our swim.
His mother can teach him the way to behave, but she won't make a sissy out of him.
Not him!
Not my boy!
Not Bill.
Bill.
My boy Bill, I will see that he's named after me.
I will...
Okay, so it continues along.
It's an amazing number because it's his whole thought process.
John Ray plays Billy Bigelow, who's a bad guy in this musical.
He's actually a criminal, and he's married to Julie, who's the heroine of the play, and Wait a second.
And she's pregnant with their child.
And this is when she's told him that she's pregnant now.
And he's a loser.
I mean, he's a derelict.
He works as a carnival barker, basically, a carousel barker.
That's why it's called carousel.
And he's talking about what it's going to be like when he has a son.
And halfway through this song, he realizes, wait a second, this could be a girl.
And if this is a girl, it totally changes his mathematics.
And it totally changes who he is.
And he realizes that for the first time, he's gonna have to be a man.
How am I gonna provide for her?
How can I protect her?
Why do I have to change who I am?
And he's unable to change who he is, and so he resorts to thievery, and it ends up badly.
But it's an amazing musical, and this number is just... You see him change as a human being over the course of the number.
It's an amazing, amazing number.
Okay, things that I hate.
Kurt Schilling.
There's a picture, was a picture for the Boston Red Sox, and he tweeted, he put up a Facebook post about the North Carolina transgender law.
You wanna see political incorrectness?
This is politically incorrect, okay?
So, he puts up this Facebook post, and it shows a man who's dressed in what looks like a dress, but it's got pieces cut out for the boobs and for the stomach, and he's wearing a blonde wig, and this thing says, let him into the restroom with your daughter, or else you're a narrow-minded, judgmental, unloving, racist bigot who needs to die.
Right?
And that's a funny Facebook meme.
And he wrote, ESPN fired him for this.
Fired him for this.
Okay?
This is the second time they've gone after Schilling.
He also tweeted way back when, several months ago, he tweeted that 5-10% of Muslims are extremists.
Only 7% of Germans were Nazis.
need laws telling us differently pathetic ESPN fired him for this fired him for this okay this is the second time they've gone after Schilling he also tweeted way back when several months ago he tweeted that five to ten percent of Muslims are extremists only seven percent of Germans were Nazis how did that go and he was suspended for that because apparently comparing radical Muslims to Nazis is bad There are a bunch of other people at ESPN who have never lost their jobs over anything remotely like this.
Tony Kornheiser suggested that the Tea Party was like ISIS.
No problem.
Kevin Blackistone suggested that the National Anthem was a quote-unquote war anthem.
No problem.
Lou Holtz suggested that a college coach was like a Nazi.
No problem there, but if you compare a radical Muslim to a Nazi, then you get suspended.
This is how it works at ESPN.
As I've said before, MSNBC with footballs, the left will not rest.
They will not rest until every aspect of our lives has been infused with leftism.
We can't be allowed to have nice things, right?
I mean, the left has to take everything.
Every element of joy has to be taken out of life and converted to leftism.
It's the only way that the left can win, is through censorship and firing, and it's just gross.
Okay, couple entries from the mailbag really quickly.
So, Let's start with this one from Victor.
I'm a Christian.
I sometimes struggle with my faith.
Why do you believe in God?
In one of your podcasts, you ask the question, why do we live in a cruel world if God is powerful and merciful?
Perhaps we've inherited the sins of our ancestors, but is that fair and merciful?
Why doesn't God convey the truth to us by talking to us or writing all the laws in the sky so we don't misinterpret or falsify his words and create different religious views?
Okay, so there are several questions there.
I believe in God because I look at the way that the world works and if you behave responsibly and decently according to the basic rules of behavior that God lays out in the Bible, you end up with a better life.
That means that there's a system that's been created by someone or something that leads good action to lead to good result.
Now, that leads to the second question.
Why is it sometimes bad things happen to good people?
Why isn't it a one-to-one ratio?
The answer there is that that dismisses free will.
Take yourself out of the human side of the equation for a moment and try to think like God, which of course is impossible.
Try to think like God.
You're not... No longer are you worried about your own personal good or bad.
You're God, and you're trying to design a system.
You're trying to design a system where human beings not only do the right thing, but they have the choice to do creative things.
When it says in the Bible that men are created in the image of God, what it means is we have creative capacity.
We have creative capacity.
Not only choice capacity, but the ability to create something where nothing was, essentially.
Which is why you can create civilizations.
You can create energy out of oil, which is magic, right?
I mean, you can do all of these things.
If you are designed that system, what social scientists have found is that if you're running an office, there are two sorts of behaviors that you want to encourage.
One is habit, and the other is flow.
So habit is, you know, you want to make sure that you put on your shoes in the morning, you get up in the morning, you put on your shoes, you do it every morning forever, and you will never forget to put on your shoes because now it's a habit.
So there are certain things in life where Habit is necessary, and that's why most of the time, most of the time, basic rules result in basic consequences.
Don't hurt people, they won't hurt you, right?
This should become a habit.
Then there's the creative aspect of life that God wants to forward in us.
That can't exist if all you are is a creature of habit.
Flow only exists where you are feeling in consonance with your purpose.
Flow, as defined by social scientists, is the notion that, for example, like when I'm working on a book, I feel there's a certain time when anybody's working at anything.
Where you feel as though you are completely in consonance with your work.
You lose track of time.
You lose track of your surroundings.
You're just ensconced in what it is you're supposed to be doing because you're creating.
In order to have this, according to social scientists, you can't have preconceived rules hemming you in on all sides.
There has to be a freedom of movement.
There can't be a one-to-one ratio, in other words.
You have to feel free to have new ideas and do new things.
And so God creates a system where there's a certain amount of randomness and chaos to the system, at least from our point of view.
And that's specifically so that we can act with the freedom necessary in order to create, because if there was always a one-to-one ratio, there would be no creativity.
We would just be a machine, and the programming would be placed upon us.
That's why God doesn't write rules in the sky, because if he were to write those rules, and we were to abide by those rules, then there's no creativity in the machine.
The machine doesn't create.
The machine just follows its programming.
If you want to create, there has to be freedom inside the programming built in, and that's what God does.
And unfortunately, I have to cut it short a little bit this week, because
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